Prussian Bavarian

A ruling last week from Germany’s highest court has cleared the way for the country to go to the polls on 18 September. But in truth the election campaign has long been in full swing, with political leaders holding rallies across the country throughout the summer.

Gerhard Schröder is attempting to repeat his stunning campaign achievement of 2002 when he brought the Social Democratic Party from behind to defeat his centre- right opponents and their candidate for the chancellorship, Edmund Stoiber.

This time the centre-right alliance of the CDU and Bavaria’s CSU has put up Angela Merkel for the chancellorship, but Stoiber is still playing a big part in the campaign. Perhaps too big a part for the comfort of CDU strategists.

In August, Stoiber told election rallies in Bavaria that he did not believe that voters in the former East Germany should decide the outcome of the national election. In 2002, support among East German voters for the SDP was widely seen as having swung the result Schröder’s way. Stoiber’s apparent disrespect for East German voters provoked a storm of criticism in the newspapers and reproaches from some of his CDU allies.

Then he was accused of trying to duck out of a TV debate with Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance minister who is now standing as co-leader of the Left Party, which is increasingly popular in East Germany.

A few hours after agreeing to the debate, CSU headquarters in Munich said that a newspaper debate would do just as well. Stoiber was accused of cowardice and commentators said he was putting the CDU/CSU at risk.

The attention focused on Stoiber and his difficulties with East Germany is in part a hangover from the 2002 campaign.

Back then, with unemployment on the rise and the centre-right alliance of Stoiber’s CSU and Merkel’s Christian Democrats comfortably ahead in the polls, it appeared he could not lose. Then came floods in eastern Germany. Stoiber was on holiday when the disaster struck. The media-savvy Schröder was quick to respond and was photographed knee-deep in water pledging unlimited funds for flood victims.

Stoiber’s campaign stumbled – literally, in one much re-played incident, when he failed to negotiate the steps onto a stage.

With floods again hitting parts of Germany, the ghosts of that disastrous campaign still haunt the CDU/CSU.

But Stoiber also commands attention because whatever his campaigning deficiences, he is one of Germany’s most important politicians. And if the CDU/CSU alliance is returned to power, one of the intriguing questions is whether Stoiber would want to join a federal administration and whether anyone would want him in it.

The German media has reported that the 63-year-old Bavarian leader has given a “personal undertaking” to Merkel that he would serve in her government.

The speculation is that Stoiber, who has overseen a transformation in the Bavarian economy, might become foreign minister or even head of a new ‘super’ ministry for the economy.

A counter-argument is that Stoiber would be wise to stay well clear of the uncertainties of federal politics and remain as state premier in Bavaria where he is hugely popular and his party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), enjoys almost absolute power.

A close Stoiber aide says: “Like everyone else, I don’t know what he will do but Stoiber has always said he regards his current job as the best job in the world.” Stoiber says equivocally: “As party chairman, I am open to both possibilities. First, though, we must win the election.”

But could Stoiber work as a subordinate to Angela Merkel? In 2002, he beat her for the chance to run against Schröder. Now it is she who is in the ascendancy. She is the Protestant ‘Girl from the East’; a childless, twice-married divorcee, who was raised in the impoverished former East Germany.

Stoiber, by contrast, is a father-of-three devout Catholic from the wealthy south. Married since 1968, Stoiber was happy to make political capital out of the longevity of his marriage during the 2002 campaign, repeatedly using the line: “I don’t apologise to anyone that I’ve stayed married for 34 years to the same person.” This was seen as a not-very-subtle dig at Schröder who (like his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer) is on his fourth wife.

Stoiber was born in 1941 in Oberaudorf near Rosenhelm in Bavaria.

His wife, Karin, described by an aide as the “driving force” behind Stoiber, is one of the Sudeten Germans whose parents were thrown out of Czechoslovakia at the end of the Second World War. Stoiber is a keen champion of the 2.5 million Germans expelled from what is now the Czech Republic.

The couple have two daughters, Constance and Veronica, a son, Dominic and two grandchildren.

After military service cut short by a knee injury, Stoiber studied law in Munich. In 1971, he took a post at the Bavarian State Ministry for Economic Development and the Environment.

Within 12 months, he got his first big break when he was appointed personal adviser to the man who would become his political mentor, the then minister of state, Franz Josef Strauss, one of the towering figures of post-war German politics who, like Stoiber, unsuccessfully stood against a Social Democrat Chancellor (Helmut Schmidt in 1980). Stoiber later became head of Strauss’s cabinet.

A senior official in the Bavarian state chancellery says Strauss had had an enormous influence on his career but they were different characters. “Strauss was the populist, a typical Bavarian who loved his beer.

Stoiber is more Prussian than Bavarian, an intellectual who is more interested in working than drinking.

Whenever he’s at a Bavarian beer festival it isn’t alcohol you’ll find in Stoiber’s mug but fruit juice or water.”

With his grandfatherly white hair, Stoiber is generally seen as a reserved, schoolmasterly type who has difficulty in inspiring personal support. The gaffe-strewn 2002 campaign was a personal career low-point (he called a chat show host by the name of a formal rival and forgot the name of Deutsche Telekom), but his 12-year premiership of Germany’s second largest land (its 12 million population is bigger than several EU member states) is generally deemed a success. As premier, he is responsible for an annual budget of €35 billion.

Bavaria, once a mostly agricultural economy, has developed into a thriving, hi-tech centre with a jobless rate of 6.5%, half the national average. Under Stoiber, the province’s slogan has become ‘laptops and lederhosen’ drawing on the combination of a booming industry and a love of the state’s conservative tradition.

Stoiber has a reputation as a right-wing hardliner and has outspoken views on some European issues.

He is a fierce opponent of Turkey’s accession to the EU and is well-known for his tough anti-immigration stance. Stoiber is also one of the few German politicians to demand that the stalled EU constitution be subject to a national referendum.

Hans Spitzner, Bavarian state secretary of economic affairs, transport and technology, has known Stoiber for more than 30 years (they entered parliament at the same time) and says: “His strength is that he has great vision but also an eye for the smallest detail…The only weakness I’ve ever detected is his dislike of holidays.”

When he isn’t working, Stoiber enjoys walking and cycling but football is his real passion (he is a vice-president of Bayern Munich where he is a season ticket holder).

German Socialist MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dörfler says Stoiber is capable of being “quite ruthless” when things do not go his way.

German Socialist MEP Jo Leinen says Stoiber’s failed attempt to be chancellor probably still rankles with him and means he is unlikely ever to work under Merkel. “There would be just too much conflict between them,” he says.

If the CDU/CSU cannot win an absolute majority but do form a government then they would be forced to give the foreign minister post to their coalition partners, whether the liberal FDP or, in the event of a grand coalition, with the SPD. As that is probably the only job that could tempt Stoiber to Berlin, it would leave him to carry on as Bavaria’s prime minister…and with those Bavarian folk costumes.